The present water route between the two oceans was preceded as early as the 19th century BC by an east-west canal from the Nile River to the Red Sea. It was filled in for military reasons in AD 775 by Caliph Abu Jaafer Abdullah al-Mansur. In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered a survey made in 1799 for a direct canal from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, but the project was abandoned when the French survey team mistakenly concluded that a sea-level canal was impossible. In 1854 and 1856, Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained rights from Said Pasha, khedive of Egypt, to establish a company to build and operate for 99 years a canal open to the ships of all nations. Construction was completed in 1869 at more than double the originally estimated cost of $41,860,000. The United Kingdom acquired a controlling interest in the company when the debt-ridden khedive, Ismail Pasha, was forced to sell his holdings in 1875.